


That Damn "Steve is in Danger" Radar

by minty_stripes



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Happy Ending, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:14:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minty_stripes/pseuds/minty_stripes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Asset does not know why he keeps finding himself on a patch of ice in the North Atlantic.  But he does.  And he knows it's because someone is in danger.  He just can't figure anything out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Damn "Steve is in Danger" Radar

**Author's Note:**

> so I saw that tumblr post about Bucky having a "Steve is in danger" radar, and then the one about the Winter Soldier finding him so quickly in CA:TWS because his "Steve is doing something stupid" GPS had activated, and I got really horrible thoughts about the Winter Soldier finding himself in the middle of the North Atlantic in the 1970s with no idea why he's there, so this happened.

                It is 1955 and the Asset is waiting.  He is sitting in the dark, tense like a tightly pulled wire that when tripped will blow the place to pieces.  He waits, under cover of darkness, and eventually his mark arrives.  He slips out from under the stairs and creeps silently behind him, following him into the apartment building and up the stairs.  The door locks behind them and the Asset grabs the man around the neck, slamming him down onto the floor with a knee pressed into his back.  He holds a gun to the back of the man’s neck.

“The name of your contact in Poland.”

“Who sent you?!” He grunts as the Asset presses the gun harder against his neck and the knee in his back digs in.  He can feel his spine threatening to crack under the force.

“The name.”  He bites out, cocking the gun.  The man flinches but doesn’t speak.  The Asset pulls a knife from his boot and sets it against the bottom of the man’s ear.  The man begins to breathe heavily.

“Okay wait, wait, I can’t tell you the name, but wait, just hold on-” He speaks in a rush.  The Asset sets the gun on the man’s back and uses one hand to pull the ear tight and the other to slice through the cartilage in one swift motion.  The man begins to scream, loud and guttural as the Asset tosses the severed ear aside and picks the gun back up, calmly cleaning the knife off and tucking it back into his boot.  He bashes him in the side of the head with the butt of the pistol.

“Quiet.”  The man bites his lip, tries to stop screaming, but ultimately can’t.  The Asset sighs and grabs a fistful of the man’s hair, pulling his head up and gagging him with a strip of cloth torn from his shirt.

“I told you to be quiet.”  The man begins to cry.  The Asset binds the man quickly with rope from his bag and sets him down on the floor beneath the window.  He sits down across from him and watches him with passive eyes.

“I have time.  You do not.”  He told the man.  The man struggled against his bonds, blood trickling down the side of his face and neck.  The Asset pulled his knife from his boot again, flipping it nonchalantly around his fingers.  Without warning, no change in expression and no change in body language, he buried the knife in the man’s thigh.  The man tried to scream, and the Asset shook his head in disappointment.

“Your contact.”  The man nodded, sobbing and choking, and the Asset slowly removed the gag.

“Jakub Mazur.  Jakub Mazur.  Please don’t hurt me.” He sobbed.  The Asset nodded and shot the man in the head.

                The Asset was working on cleaning his fingerprints from the man’s apartment when it hit him.  Trouble.  Someone was in trouble.  Someone that he needed to take care of.  And not take care of as in kill for once, but take care of as in save.

                His handlers found him three days later, curled up in a ball and sobbing in a barren spot of frozen wasteland in the North Atlantic.  They called it a break in his programming, and brought him back for another wipe.

                It is 1963 and the Asset is waiting.  The sight on his rifle waits, watching the motorcade go by.  The man with the dark brown hair and the large grin appears in his car with his wife.  There is security all around him.  It does not matter, because he squeezes the trigger and the man is dead.  There is a man called Oswald who is set up to take the fall.  The asset grins and disappears.

                Something is wrong.  Someone is in danger.  Someone important.  The Asset does not know who could possibly be in danger.  He does not know why he should care.

                A week later his handlers find him in a makeshift shelter on a patch of ice in the North Atlantic.  They mutter something about the strange repetition as they take him away for a wipe.  He follows uneasily.  There is something about this spot of ice that he needs to protect.  The wipe comes, and he is as cold as that patch of ice.

                It is 1991 and the Asset is waiting.  The woods are cold, but not as cold as he is used to.  It is dark, and there is snow falling lightly.  He has put out the lamps on the side of the road, plunging the small patch of road into darkness.  He can see the car coming, and steps out slowly into the middle of the road.  The brakes slam, the car tries not to hit him, but he braces his left arm and slams it into the hood before rolling out of the way for the car to spiral and flip.  He approaches the smoking wreck slowly, flexing his muscles and snapping his joints back into place.  The woman in the passenger seat is dead, she has broken the windshield with her head, and there is blood everywhere.  He checks for a pulse, and, satisfied, walks around to the drivers’ side.  The man is not dead.  There is blood in his eyes and his legs are crushed under the metal of the crumpled car, he is bleeding from his temple.  His eyes widen in horror when he sees the Asset.

“James?”  The Asset grabs a fistful of his hair and slams his face into the steering wheel.  The man’s nose breaks and fresh blood gushes out, splattering across his clothes and the steering wheel.  The Asset pulls his head back.  The man makes the whimpering, whining noise of a dying animal, and the Asset slams his head back against the steering wheel.  He hears his skull crack and slams it again.  The man falls limply forward.  He checks his pulse, and leaves.

                He is on a patch of ice in the North Atlantic again, crying quietly, muttering something about a man named Howard.  His handlers take him away, and he goes easily, ready to forget what he has done.  There is still caked blood on his hands when they bring him to the chair.

                It is 2012 and the Asset is waiting.  He is in New York City, there is a woman in the scope of his rifle and a finger on the trigger.  He squeezes the trigger between breaths and the woman falls and the Asset disappears like smoke. 

                He is walking through the streets of the city, but he is not sure where he is going.  The sky opens up and hordes of strange creatures pour into the city, firing strange weapons.  Around him people are screaming and running and being shot.  He begins to run too, though he is not sure where and he is not sure why.  Ahead of him, the creatures are landing and a woman with red curls and a pistol in each hand goes streaming by, hitting a creature with every shot.  She is not who he is looking for. 

                He slips through the city unnoticed, killing any of the creatures who wanders too close.  There is a man in front of him, standing on a car, shouting orders to a group of police officers.  The man is wearing a strange sort of costume, and a creature is coming up behind him.  Without a thought, the Asset shoots the creature before disappearing into the shadows.  He does not know why he did that.  What does the man matter to him?  The Asset runs, but he does not make it far before he knows something is wrong.  He thinks it might be the man in the bright costume.  He is not sure.  He takes refuge in an abandoned apartment building, setting up his rifle in one of the fifth story windows and watches the carnage below. 

                He shoots the creatures that threaten the man in the striped costume, and wonders why he does this.  He knows it is not his mission.  It is not allowed.  It is more than habit, though he should have no habits.  It is more than instinct, it is something written so deeply into himself that nothing can erase it.  There should be nothing like that, because he knows he does not truly exist.  After nearly two hours, a man enters the apartment, and he sets down the rifle.  He holds his hands out to be cuffed.  His handler cuffs him while two other operatives disassemble his rifle and get to work wiping any trace of him from the apartment.

                 He welcomes the wipe, embraces the promise of blankness it offers.  He does not want to think about why he protected that man.  He does not want to know why it was so important to him.  He wants to work and think of nothing.  He wants the strange pain in his chest to stop.

                 It is 2014 and he is shooting the man with the eye patch and the permanent scowl.  He is careful when he does it, careful that he does not hit the other man.  He does not know why.  The other man is chasing him, so he runs, runs for his life.  He is having fun though, which is something that he does not immediately recognize.  Something about this feels familiar, and when the man throws his shield, he catches it and throws it back, a grin pulling at his lips underneath his mask.  He disappears and wonders if he will see the man again.

                 It is 2014 and he is told he must kill the man named Steve Rogers, the one who calls himself Captain America.  He is told that the man is a traitor, an obstacle for Hydra.  The man must die, and he is the only one who can do it.

The Asset rolls away from the man and his mask drops off.  He raises himself, ready to fight the man off, and the man stops, his face screwed up in confusion.

“Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” The Asset asks.  He stares at the man, his eyes sliding away as the name stirs something deep inside him.  He looks back at the man.  The woman with the red hair and murder in her eyes shoots at him, and he disappears.

                It is 2014 and he does not want to be wiped.

“But I knew him.”

                It is 2014 and he is wiped.

                It is 2014 and the strangely familiar man in the strangely familiar costume says he knows him.  The Asset does not trust him.  The man and his memories do not agree with the Asset’s memories.  The man is falling and the Asset jumps after.  Something tells him he has to.  He pulls the man from the burning river and waits for him to breathe.  The man breathes.  He has failed his mission.  He does not care.

                The face staring back at him in the museum cannot be his.  It can’t be.  The man studies the face.  It is undoubtedly his face.  But the words around it must be lies.  He does not know any of those things, and if that face is his, he should know.  The man stares at the face and the lies for a long time.  The lies feel familiar.  The lies feel right.  The things he knows start to feel wrong.  The man disappears.

                It is 2016 and the Asset is no more.  It is 2016 and James Buchanan Barnes is lying in bed, watching the sun rise outside his window.  It is 2016 and something feels wrong, Steve is in danger.  It is 2016 and Steve has the windows in the kitchen flung open and is trying to get the smoke in the kitchen to dissipate.  It is 2016 and Steve still cannot cook breakfast to save his life.  It is 2016 and Steve kisses him awake every morning and kisses him to sleep every night and their biggest concern is their burnt toast every morning.  It is 2016 and Bucky is safe and Steve is burning their breakfast and it is 2016 and they are alive and together and the danger has passed.  It is 2016 and Bucky has found Steve again and the world is finally right.  It is 2016 and they are two broken soldiers in love, and that is all that matters.


End file.
